Documentary filmmaker Alison MacLean presented to the NOA of BC’s February event to a sold-out crowd that prompted many questions and comments. Alison’s 70-minute documentary “Burkas2Bullets” will be shown at the SFU-Woodward Theatre on Friday, March 3rd, at 7:00 pm.

Alison is owner and director of Tomboy Digital Productions. “Burkas2Bullets” reflects her six years of combat camera footage, during which she has been embedded with Afghan, Canadian, American, German, French, British, and Dutch forces. Often receiving requests by others to accompany and assist her, she has turned them down, unwilling to put others at risk by going where she goes.

“A personal journey through 2010-16 and the drama of war and the empowerment of women,” as she describes her documentary. Highly recommended.

This is an extraordinary winter in Canada, where even on the west coast there have been weeks of freezing weather. In Europe, the cold and snow is reaching as far south as the Mediterranean.

One hundred years ago, the winter of 1916-17 was bitter and persistent into the spring. Troops had struggled through the Battle of the Somme. It was a terrible time for the millions of men hunkered down in trenches, dugouts, and–the lucky ones–winter billets.

Anzac troops, Battle of the Somme

In “Stand to Your Horses” author Sam Williams describes how the Canadian Cavalry Brigade stood to during the Battle of the Somme but the breakthrough that would allow the cavalry room to attack never occurred. As winter closed in the Canadian cavalry returned to billets in the area of Bethencourt. Some leave was had, with Williams managing three days in Paris.

All was not carefree R and R, however. A “Pioneer Battalion” was detached to work digging trenches and stringing wire. As Williams put it,
“This period was marred by almost constant rains and mud-rain-mud-rain and more mud was our constant situation. The bright spot about it was that the rain soaked ground to a certain extent minimized the dangers from shell fire.”

Soon after came numerous snowstorms and freezing temperatures. As a British NCO described it later, “The coldest winter was 1916-17. The winter was so cold that I felt like crying…”

Terror on the ALERT comes from my time in British and Canadian submarines. A mere dog watch, compared to many of my former shipmates. I was extremely lucky to find myself, in 1968, as ‘fourth hand’ as the Brits would say; in Canadian parlance, Operations Officer in Her Majesty’s Canadian Submarine OKANAGAN. The OK was the third and last of Canada’s Oberon class submarines, top-flight boats that served Canada well for more than thirty years. Regarding OKANAGAN, I can’t put it better than has Don “Buster” Brown, outside wrecker on commissioning, and later in his career Maritime Command Chief Petty Officer:

“HMCS/m Okanagan was the most glamourous and up-to-date O-boat ever built in her time and was, sadly, the last submarine (and vessel) to be built in Chatham dockyard’s long history of submarine construction.”

OKANAGAN commissioned on June 22nd, 1968, and less than a week later sailed for work-ups in Faslane, Scotland.

I always wanted to tell the story of at least part of my dad’s life. His was the Great War, 1914-18. Speaking for himself and his comrades in the Canadian cavalry, he joked, “We went to war like gentlemen, on horseback.” And they died like soldiers, in droves. Tom Mackay was one of the lucky ones. If his war was “interesting,” his reasons and circumstances under which he joined up were unusual. Articled to a prominent Winnipeg lawyer, a King’s Counsel, the machinations of the KC’s rogue lawyer son make for an irresistible fact pattern.

Telling the story of an immediate family member has problems and issues that have been a source of discomfort for many a biographer. I wasn’t prepared to write a biography, preferring to do the story as a novel. This of course allowed me to fill in the blanks of my knowledge, as Dad had passed on long before I put pen to paper.

One of the issues I wanted to deal with was his relationship to his first wife, Florence, who sadly died when her children, my half-siblings, were very young. And they too have passed away.

I was crafting a scene between Tom and Ellen, as I called her, when I had the distinct feeling that Tom Mackay, my father, was peering over my shoulder. He was obviously disapproving of whatever I was trying to say.

“That’s not what I’d do,” or some such remark, I imagined.

That was one of many instances where I felt constrained by my own image of my dad. I came up with what I thought was a practical solution. I changed Tom, my protagonist’s, name to “Macrae,” my paternal grandmother’s maiden name. From then on protagonist Tom was much less constrained by the unknowable details of my father’s life.

That being said most of the events and many of the characters in Soldier of the Horse were real and in fact toned down so as not to be unbelievable in a novel. The truth, as so often, being stranger than fiction.

I’ve been a writer, off and on, since 1984. Mostly “off,” as my two published books (2011 and 2014) demonstrate. The early effort, in the mid ’80s, came to naught. It was a crime novel, a thriller, and has for years languished in my crawl space. “Soldier of the Horse” and “Terror on the ALERT” dealt with World War I Canadian cavalry and a Cold War submarine respectively. I’ve returned to my roots, in a way, having embarked on a police procedural, trying to steer it through to publication.

I’ll follow up this item with more about the genesis of “Soldier” and “Terror”, and about the story to come.

I’ve dropped lots of hints–more than hints, really, because at various times I’ve read in public places from my uncompleted manuscript. It’s moving along, though, I’m happy to say. Shown in the photo are a couple of sliding doors in my office. On the right is part of an outline, and to the left are cards with scenes. As you can see, nothing is written in stone–yellow stickies abound: helpful notes like “NEEDS TO BE SOONER”, “CHANGE TO (different character)”.

At this point I’ve had a marvelous writer do a structural edit, which has been extremely helpful.

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Forces With History" is published via email 1-2 times a month. It deals with issues of interest regarding Canadian armed forces, modern and historical. Please give it a try if so inclined--comments and feedback are always welcome!